Two brokers can be better than one...

23rd December 2011by Andrew Bird, Executive Director, Sharesight

I wanted to let you know about something that Sharesight offers that other portfolio management solutions don’t.

And that is that Sharesight operates completely independently from your broker, planner or any other investment service that you may use – while still enabling one or all of them to have the level of access you would prefer. This means you can have more than one broker viewing and advising on your portfolio, either with ‘read only’ or ‘full access’.

For you as their client that’s a huge benefit, because most brokers or planners use proprietary portfolio management systems that are limited by the fact that they can’t link with, or view, any others. (And can I just point out that while these systems may offer some of the functionality that Sharesight provides, none are, in my view, as sophisticated or user-friendly).

So how can enabling multiple access can be an advantage?

Of course it all depends on your investing style, but many people find that using multiple brokers offers a range of benefits.

These can include comparing research and recommendations, the ability to access different specialist functionality provided by different brokers and the general benefit of not putting your eggs in one basket, so to speak. Not to mention that, as we all know, playing two suitors off each other can increase their level of interest!

A recent conversation with Sharesight subscriber Jonathan illustrated this perfectly.

He found that the service from his broker was dropping off, and when he gave his broker read-only access to Sharesight, the broker didn’t use it.

However, he added a second broker and hey presto! Now both of them use it. This way, both brokers can see what the other is recommending (nothing like a bit of healthy competition!). Jonathan has found this has improved service and responsiveness from both brokers considerably.

At the same time, he’s also discovering additional ‘soft information’ that he would have been unlikely to find otherwise.

For example, one broker will say “oh, that stock was recommended because his firm did the capital raising for that company”.

This sort of intelligence can add an extra dimension and real value to the decision-making process.

If you want to give multiple brokers a try, here are a few tips:

Use the new Contract Note importing feature - It makes it really easy to keep track of your trades and the system will make a note of which broker made each trade. (click here to find out more).

If you do decide to give two (or more) brokers a try through Sharesight, be sure to use the custom tagging feature (this can be set up in the Performance Report to track one broker’s recommendations against another. This makes it easy to compare the performance of each broker’s picks and decide which suitor you like best!

Lastly, if you want good service from a broker you need to be prepared to reward them for good research or advice. If you try and get good research from a full service broker and then put all your trades through an online discount broker, don’t expect the flow of information to last very long.

But don’t take our word for it. If you think you’d benefit from the insights of more than one broker, get onto it today and throw Sharesight into the mix to make sure you get the best that both can offer.